Camino Introduction

Wednesday 10th February 2016

On 22nd April 2016 I am finally going to head off to walk the Camino Trail which is a 753km walk from the south of France at a little place called Saint-Jean Pied-de-Port (just a little to the east of Biarritz), which literally translated means “Saint John at the foot of the mountain pass” and ends at the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. I have been told that its well worth adding another 4 days and walking another 100km right to the coast at Fisterra.

The route is also known as “The Way” and this term was made famous by the movie of the same name starring Martin Sheen. It is also known as El Camino Frances (The French route), so called because it starts in France. There are lots of other routes all around Europe and they are all essentially ‘Pilgrimages’ which in the past were religious or spiritual journeys to specific religious shrines or cathedrals, although these days it is more about an individuals journey of discovery in general.

I will be back in England before the 4th June, so that will give us 6 weeks (42 days, pretty close to 40 days and 40 nights) to walk the full distance. I have created a Google interactive map (currently just a rough guess at the route), which hopefully will contain links back to this blog and photos along the way too. I note that Google seems to think I could walk this entire route in 173 hours, which is just over 7 days, but we will be aiming for about 20Km (12 miles) per day, so that’s nice and comfortable 😀

I have found a good list of all the hostels (Albergues) along the way here

St-Jean-Pied-de-port-57la-citadelle

St-Jean Pied-de-port (The start)

route

The route is signposted with these shells

Santiago de compostela cathedral

Santiago de compostela cathedral (The end)

The route is really called “Camino de Santiago” which is translated as “the route to Santiago” so its always a bit odd when people talk about “The Camino Trail” because they are really saying “The Route Trail” 😀 but no matter whenever you say “Camino” most people know what you mean if they have heard of it!

As a bit of a preview I found this interactive map online of someone else’s journey which contains some photos along the way, and if you look along the bottom, there are lots of other maps from other people too…

I plan to blog every day (assuming I can get online), so make sure you keep an eye on www.JohnVDenley.com/Camino to stay in touch! 😀